Commercial questions
Tooling cost is driven by the number of stations, die size and whether hardening or special coatings are required; typical lead time is a few weeks for soft tooling and longer for hardened progressive or transfer tooling.
Five things move the number more than anything else:
Because those factors are read off your drawing rather than guessed, the tooling estimate follows the DFM review — not the other way round.
Tooling is normally quoted at 15–30 natural days, with first production orders typically following 3–5 weeks later. Inside that window the sequence is: die design, machining of plates and punches, wire EDM of openings and profiles, hardening and tempering, assembly, tryout, then FAI. Hardened progressive or transfer tooling takes longer than a soft or single-operation tool because there are more components to harden, fit and time.
Bulk heat treatment of die components runs through an audited partner and is the one step we do not perform in-house at scale — a small furnace is kept on site only for emergency die repairs. That partner is inside our supply chain plan, so it does not become your scheduling problem.
Design, CNC machining, grinding, medium and fast wire EDM, tapping, welding, assembly and tryout all happen under one roof. When tryout shows that a station needs a change, that change is a tool room job rather than a negotiation with an outside die shop — which is usually where both time and cost quietly accumulate.
See the machine list on the equipment list and the workflow on in-house tooling design & build.
Tooling can be quoted as a one-off charge, amortised into the piece price, or split between the two, depending on volume and how long the program is expected to run. The commercial structure is stated openly in the quotation, with the tooling line separated from the part price so you can see what you are paying for.
The engineering review that tells you whether the part is feasible, which forming route fits and where the risk sits is part of the quotation process. We would rather find a problem in review than in tryout.
Sometimes. Where the geometry and material allow it, a soft tool or a partially hardened die can be brought up to production condition rather than scrapped. Whether that is sensible is answered during the prototype review, not assumed.
You receive the forming route, the tooling concept and the cost drivers together, so you can see what would change if the tolerance, the radius or the volume changed. Adjusting a drawing before tooling is cut is always cheaper than adjusting the die afterwards.
Send the drawing with material, volume and the dimensions that actually matter functionally. We reply with the forming route, tooling approach and inspection plan.
Send your drawing for a DFM review